Caught Ride with the Devil yesterday--it was rather surprisingly not bad. I had unfairly dismissed it based on the previews, figuring that director Ang Lee had gone all commercial and shepherded some twenty-something stars (Skeet Ulrich, Tobey Maguire, Jonathon Rhys Davies) through Young Guns for Dixie, Part III--long hair, cool Southern accents, and romantic death scenes right after the heroes realized that slavery was A Bad Thing.
Instead, Devil is a thoughtful examination of the Civil War from a perspective that was short on idealism and long on local politics--the Bushwhacker-Jayhawker "skirmishes" on the Missouri/Kansas border. Four boys join up for reasons that have nothing to do with the right to own slaves--one of them is in fact a freed slave, who signs up with his owner--and the film details their experiences as Quantrill's Raiders, culminating in the famous Raid on Lawrence, Kansas. The reenactment is superb, as are all of the battle scenes.
The story is curiously uninvolving--I feel there is a much better story to be told. It's also far too long. The performances are all decent, with Jewel distinguishing herself as a Confederate war widow primarily by turning in a natural and unforced performance rather than embarrassing herself as I had expected. Maguire is the same introverted mumbler he always is, and as always manages to be likeable anyway, and Skeet Ulrich phones it in as the rich best friend and ladies' man. Jeffrey Wright, as the exslave, is superb and the movie is worth watching for his performance, particularly his final scenes with Maguire.
So a qualified thumbs up--it takes on a tough subject matter and if it doesn't manage to entertain as well as it should, it does inform.
